


Red River Valley

by killbot2000



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Despair, Isolation, M/M, Post Apocalypse, Sci-Fi, Tatooine, Tusken Raiders (Star Wars), Vaguely Mad Max inspired, Western, but I’ve amped it up to 100, space western
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:20:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29896908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killbot2000/pseuds/killbot2000
Summary: Din Djarin is looking to the stars for a way to save his son. Cobb Vanth is looking to the earth to bury him deeper and deeper. Their wasteland of a planet offers no uncreative solution.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Kudos: 9





	Red River Valley

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my unholy creation alternatively titled “disgustingly self indulgent tropes I alone love and could write pages upon pages on” This is set on Tatooine but not in the canon Star Wars universe. It’s kind of a post apocalypse sci fi frankenstein’s monster. Anyways please enjoy.

There were tales, passed down onto him by other members of his clan, of rusty barges shooting off into space. Rooms of space, thousands of pounds of metal, flying directly into the cosmos, their heaving dirt-red flanks vanishing into the black stratosphere. 

Despite the stories of old; of explorers lifting off-planet to find things better than desert, the stars shone cold and untouchable. The tales might’ve been tall, might’ve been for those that had nothing to stave them from the desert, but the survivors fostered in the cavity of their living chests one day they could also leave this hellhole. His hope had died with his people. 

There had been explorers once, no doubt existed, but they’d left behind trash and rot and rust in an ocean of dunes. They left behind skeletal starships so stripped and scavenged, their original purpose couldn't be discerned from the remains. They left behind monuments to their failures, and looking upon them, he found himself forgotten. 

The sand shifted under his boots, ever-present and breathing in the constant sunset. Always stuck the moment before twilight, suns rising and falling by just degrees each standard day, always at the most brilliant moment where water becomes blood. Even blood satisfies thirst, but he’s running dangerously low. Running out would mean certain death for the child. He’d wither away eventually anyways, but something so tender and supple needed to be kept that way. The child’s red and splotchy hands waved at him. He sat on the man’s knee, staring up with a slack grin. 

The stranger pulled the scarf down from around his mouth. His permanent grimace settled itself on his lips. The kid met his distaste with the same unaffected sense of glee he always did, and reached for his exposed face. He stroked the stranger’s patchy beard and patted his lips before becoming satisfied and returning his hands to himself. 

“You done?” 

The kid bounced himself in response, near a pout. 

The stranger picked the canteen off his belt and unscrewed the cap. The kid watched the motions in his hands expectantly. 

“This is for both of us.” The stranger told him. 

He held out the canteen. The kid looked from the water to the stranger, then back to the water. The canteen was absurdly large in the kid’s hands, and the stranger was near beside himself that the water would spill into the thirsty sand. He pulled off a boot, tilting it so the sand would pour from the inside. Eventually, he’d have to mend the holes around the sole and in the toe, but he hadn’t had a second of downtime since the child. All he managed now were a few hours of sleep tucked in the farthest corner of an abandoned building or starship remains. 

“Ba.” 

The stranger looked up at the kid, holding out the canteen. 

He took it and turned it over and not a single drop fell onto the ground. The stranger sighed. He screwed the cap back on then replaced his boots. Leaning back, he leaned onto his hands and looked up, through the small portholes of what was once a starship. The purple night sky teased him in perfect circles of punched out metal. What once was the starboard wall of the ship now sat buried ten feet under the sand, with the port looking straight to the sky. The stranger and the child had found their way inside the shell once night fell, like all good desert creatures. 

The stranger eyed the kid, “You offworld?”

“Ba.” 

He nodded his head. “Picked a bad time to leave home.”

The eyes of the kid watched him curiously. They had no desire to understand what the stranger was saying, just to observe him, assign him some words that only the toddler could understand. He showed no acquisition of language, no desire to understand. The stranger had no idea how much Basic he knew, if he knew any at all. If the offworlder who’d dropped him spoke anything resembling the common tongue. 

“Alright, well. Get to sleep.” He picked the kid up, carefully nested the both of them in a shallow sand pit, still warm from the suns, and gently rocked them, both to sleep.

***

Cobb Vanth rose when the suns were at their lowest points. The shadows of the settlement were deep and rich, always in twos or three on account of the multiple suns. He patrolled the settlement during the darkest hours. The alleys between the short brick houses seemed to stretch on forever into nothing, and if he might follow one, it’d take him eternity to reach the end. Like a black hole, always on the event horizon, the second before death, for all of time. 

“Evenin,’ Marshall.” A resident tipped a ragged hat from their porch. They watched Vanth pass with small, sparkling eyes that peeked out from under the brim. Vanth kept his eyes on the resident as he strode by. No suspicion, just the knowledge that those around him did bad when his back was turned. There wasn’t another half-honest man left to watch it. 

“Evenin.’” He responded. The resident kept a tight lipped smile on their face as Vanth passed. 

Farther down the drag; as the road lightened up to civilization once again, Vanth found smugglers gutting what looked to be a ramshackle dwelling, made from tin and sand and spit. They scavengers pulled out the valuable insides.

“Hey!” Vanth called, “Y’all have permissions for that?” 

A scavenger, upon hearing him, cackled a loud and dry sound. Another peeked its hooded head out from a shuttered window. 

“Suck me, Vanth. Ain’t gonna get none of us outta here.” 

“Mind how you talk to me, scavver.” 

“Your law’s dead, lawman.” One taunted. “You’re a man of doomed fortune.” 

“Get lost you fucking bums.” 

The scavengers cackled again but fled like a flock of birds, leaving disassembled pipes and furniture and trinkets in their wake. They’d taken the valuable metal from the very insides of the pipes and fixtures; wrapped in delicate spools to be traded in a foreign market. They took what little the settlement had, and for that, Vanth thought it enough for the harassment he dished out to them. 

“You ain’t ever gonna shoot them, are you?” A voice from his elbow told him. 

Vanth looked down to see Jo, a resident of the settlement. She squinted at the disappearing scavengers. They honked at each other in glee in the distance. 

“Gonna sell our shit to the Tuskens.” 

“Coupla’ wires ain’t gonna make no difference.” Vanth responded. “Ain’t you got a family to get back to? It’s dark.” 

“It’s always dark.” Jo told him, “But momma’s all gone. I ain’t get a word outta her. Something came and carved out her insides ‘n’ left us with the skin.” 

“Ain’t your momma’s fault.” 

“It’s somebody’s fault.” Jo insisted. 

Vanth shook his head. “Ain’t nobody. Look at the sky, Jo. Tell me you don’t see a planet that’s meant to be left.” 

Tatooine's sky was one giant window for which to look into space. It shone deep purple, never black or opaque, always swirling with the mesmerizing liquid of the cosmos. The impressive star belt of the galaxy bisected the sky with its pointillated lines. 

“We’re gonna be here forever, marshal. Left ‘hind like everything else.”


End file.
